Seized Pensions and Quantitative Easing

A government-run pension fund manager - hardly fills you with confidence,
does it...?

AS EVERY BRITISH ADULT well knows, the UK government long since forgot
to save a penny of his or her lifetime's National Insurance contributions.

That makes British State pensions an unfunded government liability, with today's "investors" simply
paying the "profit" on yesteryear's savings. Anyone else running this scam
would be busted as a chain-letter Ponzi. But just as central bank money printers
always evade forgery charges, so the government won't arrest itself for spending
what they vowed to put by. And they have now decided it's time to get you to
make up the difference by funding your retirement all over again.

Starting in 2012 your employer will take further deductions from your salary
- a full 8% by 2017 - and dump the money into the National Employment Savings
Trust (NEST - y'know,
just like the egg, all fragile shell and gooey inside). Your employer will
stump up a further 3% or more of your wages, also passing the cash straight
to this new government-run pension fund manager. (That's hardly a phrase to
fill you with confidence, is it?)

In the new scheme your money will apparently be saved and invested, rather
than disappearing (as your National Insurance contributions have) into the
bottomless pit of government expenditure. Oh yes, really.

Now, the trustees of NEST are all - no doubt - jolly nice people, and I think
we can be fairly sure they won't run away with your cash. They will take every
care not to do anything too silly or controversial. Such as, say, plugging
13% of your wealth into physical gold like the Dutch glassblowers union
did. Perhaps the least controversial thing NEST can do is hold government bonds;
then no one will slap their wrists, because such reckless caution is endemic
in the pensions-fund business, and doing no better than the next guy is never
a crime.

Besides, with the tsunamis of money bearing down on them month after month...a
full 11% of gross UK wages...NEST are not going to have much choice. There
simply isn't enough of anything else for them to invest in. And luckily there
are plenty of government bonds. Last year the British government issued something
like £160 billion of the things. That's about £3,000 for every
man, woman and child in the country...a hell of a lot of bonds, and sadly there
were nothing like enough natural buyers.

Despite what Brad
DeLong might think, the free market of professional fund managers doesn't
want all the gilts on offer. Because there's a very considerable risk that
this huge and ongoing rate of bond issue will cause the bonds to inflate
away to worthlessness. At least, that's the guess of history whenever a sovereign
state has got close to the national debt levels reached by the UK - and if
you won't listen to history, then just what will you heed instead?

With gilt prices thus threatening to weaken, in 2008 the UK authorities dreamt
up a fantastic wheeze to create a false market in their own bonds in a way
which would - again - land the rest of us in jail. Make the nationalized, notionally
independent Bank of England print new money to buy ever more of these bonds,
thereby artificially holding up their price!

This, as a reminder, is called Quantitative
Easing. And it's why the Bank of England is now, with £198 billion
worth, the world's No.1 holder of British government gilts. Trouble is, the
Bank would rather retain that veneer of independence...and hasn't actually
bought any more gilts since January. Reversing QE would mean selling those
gilts - but with a
further £169bn of new gilts also coming to market this financial
year to fund the coalition government's newly "austere" spending plans, where
in the hell would the Bank of England find a buyer...?

We'll ask again: Where would the Bank find a buyer for its pile of government
debt?

Look, it's not malicious, it's just lazily convenient. The Bank of England
is looking for an "exit strategy" for its vast pile of gilts at just the same
time as the government is forcing wage-earners to pay yet again for their State-mandated
pension. NEST could very happily play the part of buyer in this chucklesome
skit. Hell, it would clearly obey its own "Lower
Risk Fund" mandate by taking "very little investment risk" in a way which "may
not protect against inflation over the long term" by filling its boots with
UK government bonds.

But for you? £1,000 in today, £1,000 out in 2035. Never mind that
all it might buy you by then is a sandwich.

Okay, sure - employees will be free to opt out of NEST. But the
trust's own research shows that most people won't. More comically still,
British employers are forbidden by law from encouraging their staff to opt
out, even though it is the worker's legal right to do so.

Never mind though. Handing the State yet more of your earnings to set aside
for your pension cannot really end badly, can it? Because if it does
hit any hiccups - such as, say, the
part or whole seizure recently seen in Hungary, Poland, Bulgaria and France
- you can always get tapped for a third scheme, just to keep things ticking
over.

Formerly City correspondent for The Daily Reckoning in London and head of
editorial at the UK's leading financial advisory for private investors, Adrian
Ash is the head of research at BullionVault,
where you can buy gold
today vaulted in Zurich on $3 spreads and 0.8% dealing fees.

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